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You really start to get the idea that the wheels have come off the track when you visit Everything Halloween. It starts out by asking "if your children are always complaining that your pumpkin doesn't look as good as the ones across the street" and sniffs, "No more jack-o'-lanterns with the standard 'triangle nose and eyes' faces." Now do you feel stupid? Inferior? How can you even look your children in the face? Of all the pumpkin sites I visited, this one truly knows how to twist the knife.

Class consciousness begins and ends, however, with the doyenne of decorating, Martha Stewart. Martha shows us how to decorate pumpkins by punching tiny holes in them and inserting small white Christmas lights. She calls them "magical pumpkin lanterns." You will not see a prissier concept for Halloween decorations. Your kids will probably be beat up every time they leave the house.

But leave it to Martha to deliver the most pragmatic advice of all: "Keep in mind when planning your Halloween decorations that once a pumpkin is carved, it will rot more quickly."

In her customarily thorough fashion, Martha also offers an "Ultimate Pumpkin-Carving Kit" for almost $70, made up of instruction booklet, a canvas tool holder, keyhole saw, scraper, double melon-ball scooper, chip carving knife, hole-cutters in three sizes, linoleum-cutter, needle tool, colored glassine paper for decorating (four colors/two sheets each), six reusable template designs and two battery-operated mini-lights. It ain't just for Halloween, either: As the site notes, you can use it "all year with watermelons, turnips, and squash."

Turnip carving?

Stepping up to the next level of corporate sponsorship takes us to international candy conglomerates with a vested interest in Halloween. The good people at Hershey's offer several pumpkin carving templates and carving tips, including a pumpkin bearing ... the Hershey's logo. One can only imagine the thrill of forcing your youngster into carving a series of pumpkins sporting your favorite corporate logos -- Nike, BMW, Warner Brothers, Archer Daniels Midland.

Hershey's carving instructions bear the polish that only a top-flight legal department can lend. Specifically, the last instruction is: "Place a candle inside your pumpkin. Carefully light it -- and watch your design come to life! Do not leave a lit candle unattended." My question is: Has there been an outbreak of porch fires we haven't heard about? Call me a daredevil, but I'd never thought to make little Johnnie sit chattering on the stoop to guard his pumpkin.

Nor had I ever considered what our devout evangelical Christian brethren should do about Halloween, what with its pagan and satanic overtones. Our polite northern neighbors, however, have found a way to apply "hostile love" this season. Paul Naylor, of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship of Canada, reports the story of a Belleville, Ontario, church that distributed pumpkins with crosses carved in them. "Amid a sea of ghosts and vampires, black cats and skeletons, witches and evil grins ... Christian crosses were shining in the darkness."

Imagine a street decorated with "magical pumpkin lanterns" and "Christian cross" pumpkins. Now that's scary.
salon.com | Oct. 27, 1999

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